Interstices
by Orfik and Aaronica
Summary: After two years dealing with Jin's death, Hwoarang returns to Japan for the Ironfist Tournament and meets a British boxer. Follow up to "Impending Fury" and the Hwoarang companion piece to Aaron's "Witness." Yaoi implied.
1. Default Chapter

**DISCLAIMER: All featured Tekken characters are the property of Namco and not the authors. **  
  
  


Author:
Orfik

Warnings:
Language

Pairing:
Jin x Hwoarang | Hwoarang x Jin

Notes:
This is the first of two parts of a very brief transition piece into Jin and Hwoarang's Tekken 4 period -- two years after **In the Skin of a Lion** [www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=558229] and **Impending Fury** [www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=592025]! Both deal exclusively with Hwoarang's view of the situation. Please see **Witness** [www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=594002] for an accounting of Jin's period in Australia. A longer series will immediately follow these up. For long time readers, thanks for your patience!

Credits:
Lines are from "Unravelled" by Björk, a very fitting song, don't you think? `-_^

Archives:
Sure, but please ask first! ^_^

**  
  
  
while you are away   
my heart comes undone **

I have so many reasons to hate you. 

**slowly unravels   
in a ball of yarn**

Wanna know who killed my mother? You. 

**the devil collects it   
with a grin **

Some old Mishima soldier in Pusan, getting his thrills cheating on his wife, raping Korean women left and right. Raped my mother and left her. She was only thirteen. Fucked her over and just left her. Tainted. Sound familiar? 

**our love **

I have so many reasons to hate you, but sometimes I find myself wondering. I wonder -- if you were here, would you bother asking how many reasons I had left to love you? 

**in a ball of yarn **

I wonder what it is that I really wanted of you, too -- those tortured nights I spent in a damp cell with Bryan Fury. I hung around Tokyo for a year after his death, looking for you. I knew you weren't dead. Bryan Fury gave his life waiting for you to come. You didn't come. 

**he'll never return it   
so when you come back we'll have to make new love  
  
**

I never told what remained of my gang why we'd suddenly concentrated ourselves on Mishima Zaibatsu. Taisho gave me a hard time because I wasn't living up to my duties as renju leader. We weren't putting on any shows, weren't making any cash flow. We were starving, and it was my lazy ass fault. I couldn't explain to them how the ache in my heart superseded the one in my belly. 

Ryo inferred not so inaccurately that some chick did it to me. Things weren't the same after Hachi and Kim died, but we'd had each other, and I had you. But now their deaths made every breath I took obscene. I was scum. I'd flown away in the arms of their killer and fallen hard for him. There were days that I couldn't look at Taisho or Ryo, let alone bear my reflection in a mirror. Every place you touched, kissed -- my entire body -- it crawled with the vermin born of my betrayal. What rights to life did I have, giving Hachi and Kim to you, fucking you for your trouble? 

I left Japan a year after you disappeared. 

**he'll never return it **

And now I hear of you again, when your grandfather has announced the fourth Tekken Tournament.  


**when you come back we'll have to make new love  
**   


I remember reasons to hate you. 

The lapis waves of the Pacific lap at my soul, and this far from land the salty air whips my face with mild bursts of wind, clearing my thinking. The sarge imagines its his doing, this whipping 'Red' into shape. Keeping me calm. The same asshole told me my hair had to go, said the color should be more natural, then liketa had an aneurysm when I dyed it the same hue of wine the boys in my company were always pouring down their throats. 

Nah, it's not the sarge's doing. There's something about the moments before a mission when I feel a calm. The camouflaging, oily paints splotch my face and my fatigues are still fresh, and everyone else in the company's silent -- even Nobuo, who never seems to shut up and sort of reminds me of Hachi. There's only the wind, and the ship cutting through the waves, and the cries of the seagulls calling up memories in me. 

I left Japan when your grandfather sent his men after me, asking me about your whereabouts. I had nothing to tell them, and they realized that. They realized I didn't know shit, and let me leave. 

But it made Taisho and Ryo question why they asked me at all, and my gang distrusted me and I left them. I feared then that you might not be alive. I wouldn't have survived in Japan without you anyway, and so I went back to Korea and I got a job teaching little kids tae kwon do in Seoul. Freaky shit, I know, but some of those little boys reminded me of myself. Most of them were poor bastards with the American coloring of their fathers. Not too many with my Japanese mouth, but a few. It was fine enough for a few months, even with the nightmares. 

Every night I had them, each with subtle variations that always yielded the same end. The nightmares in which I'm praying to you and falling, falling, falling through blackness, and you are diving through the cold air beside me. Your eyes are glowing red and those magnificent black wings are tucked against your body, and you're staring at me as the winds of our descent drive your hair from your beautiful and cold face. 

No. You are staring through me. And when the ground is inches away, you distance yourself, and when the ground has broken my body, you are flying away. In a few of them, you hovered about, your regal wings flapping majestically, watching the life bleed from me. But one aspect remains static in them all: your face lacks expression. 

I wake up sweating, clutching at the dog tags around my throat, each metallic plate an insignia of my resignment to this empty, despairing existence. But the nightmares won't let me alone. 

The military isn't for me. If I could just serve on a ship I'd be fine, but they send me into these villages to do what the Japanese did to Korea, what the Americans did to Korea, what that Mishima soldier did to my mother: to fuck innocent people over. I can't describe what I see; it sickens me that I block out the suffering because my own's numbed my soul. 

And now I hear of you again, when your grandfather has announced the fourth Tekken Tournament, and there is a spark in my spirit that I can't understand. 

I have so many reasons to hate you, but sometimes I find myself wondering. I wonder if I were to find you now, would I bother recalling how many reasons I had left to love you? 


	2. Interstices 2

**DISCLAIMER: All featured Tekken characters are the property of Namco and not the authors. **  
  
  


Author:
Orfik

Warnings:
Language

Pairing:
Keiji + Hwoarang

Notes:
Flashback.

Credits:
--

Archives:
--

**  
  
**

_The nerves of Hwoarang's neck were cords strummed by Jin's mouth, coaxing the reluctant note from his lips -- a pure and rare pitch. _

_ " .. you ready to stay with me forever, Jin .. ?" Staring out into Jin's room now, sienna eyes noticing everything and nothing in the capacious spanse of it, Hwoarang felt his body anchored in the context of the warm one pressed against his back -- anchored but vulnerable to being flung into that impersonal vacuum at some point.   
  
"Yeah. I'm ready," Jin affirmed with a kiss on the earlobe before settling his cheek against the Korean's soft crown and allowing his eyes to seep blissfully closed. He put his hand over Hwoarang's chest to feel the beat of his heart._

_-- "Witness," Chapter 2.  
  
  
_

"Hey Hwaa, ever drop the soap?" Keiji yelled from his height of bunk, waving a photo in the air.  
  
"Wrong place," Hwoarang grumbled, snatching the Polaroid back. "You're thinking about your home for the last five years." Wiping it against his jeans to get the fingerprints off, the Korean tucked the picture back into his green duffel without a look. Nothing he hadn't seen before: a skinny, wild-eyed, and surprised Korean with a fuzz of orange-frosted brown hair, reclining on his bed in just his underwear. Nobuo had snapped that photo back in the barracks in Seoul, right after he decided to barnacle himself to Hwoarang. He didn't want friends back then, but there was an undertow of need in Hwoarang that weaker men like Nobuo and Hachi and Ryo sensed, a need to be the leader of something, no matter the degree of legitimacy. Even in the military, with his contentious attitude, Hwoarang garnered a cadre of followers in delinquency. Most of them didn't last out the first six months. Nobuo lasted the longest.  
  
  
But Keiji. Keiji was one of the Yurei since before the Tekken, and with the death of Kim, he became Hwoarang's oldest contact. He wasn't sure that Keiji - with his stout, muscular frame and a nose healed crooked after his father broke it when he was eleven - could be called a friend. From the very beginning, he made sure Hwoarang knew their association was about the money, and back then Keiji was hungry-eyed, taut and acidic, quick to start fights. A few misdemeanor charges - sticking up old ladies, hanging around suicide scenes and urging the CEO on the ledge to just jump, throwing stones at parked cars - stacked up over time and landed him in juvy for three years, the pen for about another three. When he got out, the Yurei weren't waiting for him.  
  
"So what's the story with Taisho and Ryo?" was the first thing he asked Hwoarang when he let the Korean crash at his place. Hwoarang was stalling a return to the warehouse, the scene of disjuncture several years prior. Keiji seemed to have mellowed out since those years past but he still had a sharp mind, and would probably funnel out the meaning of the dog tags hanging against Hwoarang's chest with two or three questions.  
  
  
  
  
_At the rear of the smoky rathskellar, the soles of Hwoarang's boots stuck to the sticky floors where he stood, leaning a portion of his weight onto a pool stick. Being crowded on Saturday night, the staff hadn't had a chance to clean up Ryo's spilt colada, and he was yelling his consumer discontent every time a shoe crackled on the surface.   
  
"Oi, someone call the inspector - this place is the worst!"  
  
"Shut up, Ryo," Taisho barked, irritated as he steadied his stick. He had practically dragged Hwoarang from the warehouse to play a few rounds on the grounds that they never had fun anymore, and now he was suffering the consequences. Hwoarang was on his way to a fifth victory. He scoffed a missed shot just as five men in dark suits were crowding into the small space in the pub's back. All three teenagers narrowed their eyes.  
  
"How do you guys see, wearing those shades at night?" Taisho quipped. Ignored, he joined Ryo in staring as the men surrounded Hwoarang, the tallest shoving the Korean into a chair. Taisho's defensive instincts, usually spontaneous in ambushes like this, went cold at the sight of Hwoarang's seeming acquiescence to brute force.  
  
"What the hell -" Ryo began, startled when the flame-haired Korean raised a hand to check his approach.  
  
"It's okay."  
  
"We're looking for Jin Kaz -"  
  
"I know who you're looking for," Hwoarang cut, his tone abrasive. Struggling to keep the words subtle in front of his gang, he demanded irreverently, "What makes you think I know where he is? What makes you think I care?"  
  
"Let's not be stupid about this situation, young man," the elected interrogator suggested, keeping his palm pasted against the breadth of Hwoarang's chest.  
  
"Let's not. How about you start doing your job? You're the babysitters, not me. You must be slipping."  
  
"We know how close to Kazama-sama you were." At the statement Taisho and Ryo exchanged glances, their expressions riddled with a confusion and budding anger that Hwoarang feared.  
  
"You don't know shit, and I think this situation makes that fucking obvious."  
_  
  
  
  
  
"It's not much of a story," Hwoarang responded blankly, stacking his elaborate collection of gi on the bunk's lower mattress. "They had problems with the way I did things, so they split."  
  
Keiji's hairy legs dangled beside him, and Hwoarang felt the older man's eyes cutting through his cool exterior. "I find that hard to imagine, Ranga. You were cash. Pure cash."  
  
"Go fig."  
  
"I could'va told you beforehand boot camp was a bad idea. You know, before you wasted your time. Why'd you want to do that to yourself anyway, man?"  
  
"Things change, Keiji," he answered indifferently.  
  
"You sure have." 


	3. Interstices 3

**DISCLAIMER: All featured Tekken characters are the property of Namco and not the authors. **  
  
  


Authors:
Orfik & Charlie

Warnings:
Language, j-rock bashing, racial preconceptions.

Pairing:
Hwoarang + Steve

Notes:
So I lied. Three parts of a Jinless Hwoarang. Say hi to the Boxin' Brit, and keep an eye out for his role in the next major Jin / Hwoarang series. ^_^

Credits:
Thanks to Charlie for the Steve characterization.

Archives:
--

**  
**There was something burning in Tokyo, but a lot of people who mattered weren't going to smell it until too late, and they weren't going to see the fire until their skin screamed escape. Even a fire needed oxygen to sustain itself though, and so the arsonist walked alone on the streets he once walked with riffraff numbers; paused in the parks he once loitered in with illegal designs; and presently sat in a club whose constituency the Yurei -- this fire's defunct gang -- used to terrorize. 

Most of the people still recognized Hwoarang under that short, slicked head of wine-red hair, in spite of that harder figure, those unfamiliar lines in an uncommon frown on his face. He told them: yeah, he was Ranga. No, keep your cash to yourself. He didn't do that shit anymore. He still played the guitar, though, and so he was sitting at a table in the rear, ignoring those cavorting around him as he listened to an industrial group's set.  
  
Steve never was one to make an entrance. Oh no. He just liked to greet the people he knew ... and they made an entrance for him. Some attention was unavoidable, of course, what with that loud shirt -- navy blue silk tonight, baggy around a tautly muscled frame, paler blue tropical vines running up hardened sides and chest -- but a little attention was never a bad thing. 

"'Ey!" he called to the bartender, making a mock-gun with his forefinger and thumb, winking at the man, who grinned cheerily in return. Some of the men at the bar slapped Steve on the back. One of them thrust a mug of some sort of beer into his hand, which was still wrapped in bandages across the knuckles. With a familiar wave to all of them, the blonde retreated to the back of the tavern ... only there, away from the press of the crowd, did he allow himself a small sigh of relief. His tensed frame folded into a chair as blue eyes tilted to watch the band.  
  
Japan wasn't as globally metropolitan as some media would have the world believe. Steve would have caught a couple of eyes -- most of them approving in an artsy context like this one -- just because his skin, his eyes, his hair color: more than a few Japanese coveted and fetished these things. Whores in Japan had blond hair; that was Hwoarang's thought as the man caught his attention. 

In Korea, delinquents dyed their hair outlandish colors and in Japan, whores went blond. He would have chuckled if he were in a lighter mood, because his suffocating black jeans and worn leather coat, capped off in trademark silver spurs, should have drawn more attention than the white man was getting. But it didn't, and the man was only vaguely familiar to Hwoarang, and so he returned his attention to the band on the stage.  
  
In the dim light, Steve's beer looked red ... like a thick glass tankard filled with blood. He eyed it somewhat suspiciously, hesitant to drink, and actually sniffed the liquid before laughing at his own fears and tipping back the mug to swallow. Thick glass hit wood with an audible ** thunk** and Steve's shoes propped against the edge of the table as he leaned back in his chair, rocking it up onto two legs, swiping the back of his palm against his lips. Blue eyes scanned the crowd again, meeting a slew of brown ones, pausing briefly on the young man with the dyed hair, also watching the band play.  
  
They sucked. They were cooing on like Dir en grey, and Hwoarang hated those pretty ass pussies. His expression reflect his unvoiced judgments, and so Steve found the ex-soldier's brow screwed in a manner implicative of some building outburst. As the lead of the cross-dressing rockers gargled the last stanzas of an intelligible and mawkish song, Hwoarang grabbed a glass of something clear and slammed it back -- something considerably stronger than water inferring from a grimace. And he had the bottle ready in his other hand to pour another, even though he paused to yell "You suck cock!" over the scattered applause before he filled the glass. It was an excuse to ignore viperous glares he got.  
  
The Beatles had been a great band ... the British Invasion of the early eighties had produced some pretty decent stuff. But Steve never could understand this whole Japanese music scene. He would dance to it, if sufficiently tanked, but being forced to sit and listen to it was quite another matter. It would take something a lot stronger than beer to enable him to tolerate the cacophony which the girl ... men ... on the stage were producing, though he worked his way through the tankard as though the sound of swallowing could drown out the lackluster instrumentals. He continued crowd-watching, for something marginally more productive to do with his time, but chuckled loudly as the Korean-type uttered his vehement approbation. His glass lifted in a salute, he called, "Amen!" before finishing off the last of the beer.  
  
Well -- they really weren't that bad, hence the glares that Steve had now too called down upon himself. Hwoarang was raised on Queen and Kiss, worshipped Hendrix, idolized Dave Navarro. He wasn't with the Japanese stuff either -- which worked, because he hated those fucks as much as the lot of them hated Koreans [only problem on his end being that nasty world power balance]. The red head still appreciated the vote, though, and gave the English guy [because that accent wasn't American] and amused, demure little smirk while the next group readied the stage for their set.   
  
"Most of them are like that. If you hated it, maybe you shouldn't be here." Being questioned on the hypocrisy of this suggestion didn't even enter the Korean's mind.  
  
Apparently the question didn't enter Steve's mind either, as he merely arched a rakish golden brow and tipped his chair farther back, golden leg hairs gleaming fine and curly on shins left bare by baggy cargo shorts. 

"Eh ... where else is there to go? The music may be bad 'ere, but you can't beat the company." Steve grinned to the Asian faces around, many of whom were looking at him banefully after his casual dismissal of their little pop icons. That task completed, the Brit paused for the first time to study the Korean's face more closely ... finding it oddly familiar, striking some memory which could not quite be brought to the surface in the stale nicotine-saturated air of the bar. 

"I'm Steve ... pleased to meet you, right?" He leaned over to offer a hand.  
  
To shake or not to shake. Hwoarang gave the impression that that wasn't going to happen, from the way he stared at Steve with the small smile remaining on his even, full mouth. But he seemed to consider the bandages swathing the knuckles, and just wanted to squeeze to see what kind of reaction that'd get. So he did. Was it tender? 

"Hwoarang. You're not here just sight-seeing, are you?"  
  
"What, don't I look enough like a tourist, mate...?" Steve laughed, and plucked at the front of his shirt with his left hand, making those floral vines ripple across his chest. The right hand scrunched together a bit in Hwoarang's grip, then Steve returned the shake full-force, squeezing the Korean's knuckles together and pumping his arm a few times. Obviously not sore, then. 

"Hoarung." He butchered the name and tried it again. "Hwoarang. Better ... d'you have anything a little easier to say?"  
  
That was the thing about most white people in the world, Hwoarang'd learned. They were offensive without even knowing it, always needing an easier way [meaning their way] or something. Not that he hated white people like he hated the Japanese. He was raised on the Queen and Kiss and the strawberry pop tarts and american pennies GIs in Seoul used to give him when he was a kid. 

"You can call me Ranga. If you can handle that -- " he added, marvelling at the handle on his palm. " .. and .. most tourists don't walk around banded up for a fight." Narrowing his eyes -- two large brown irises banded in a lighter, reddish rust -- Hwoarang sized the man up through his face alone. 

"You're here for the Ironfist."  
  
Steve's solitary devilish eyebrow lifted further, as if endeavoring to make him look sincere.

"Oh, this? I scraped my knuckles painting a roof," he repled smoothly. A lie. "Ranga I can 'andle I do believe." Blue eyes gazed uncritically, almost-innocently into the reddish-brown ones...like dried blood, thought Steve, and wondered why everything came back to blood tonight. 

"You aren't from around 'ere either. Did you come for the...tournament thing then?"  
  
"Sorta. This place is like some case of herpes I can't shake," Hwoarang intimated, probably before he even knew he was speaking aloud, because he'd breathed the words in a sigh and settled back in the chair, dark brown lashes shifting to the stage. The slinky leather he wore rasped back just enough, revealing the curled muscles of the Korean's abdomen under thin, wife-beater threads and the set of dog tags sparkling from his throat -- both as concurrently flashy and nondescript as the insignia of black angel wings tattooed up the side of his throat. Hwoarang didn't let his hair grow long again for that reason.  
  
Sky-colored gaze, not so innocent now, brushed down the line left by that open leather and across Hwoarang's stomach, as though attempting to brand a new tattoo there with looking alone. A pleased smile curled the corners of Steve's mouth. A consummate people watcher such as himself always thrilled at the prospect of interesting subjects ... and Hwoarang had proved interesting on so many levels. 

"You're not going to clear up the infection by sticking your dick back in over an' over again. Maybe you should find a new place to 'ang out." Steve assumed, of course, that the Korean was talking about the bar. His eyes moved to seek out the bartender as he pondered getting another drink, shifting his weight from heel to toe against the table's edge, chair teetering precariously.  
  
Tinctures of shadows flickered over Hwoarang's face as Steve spoke, but when he accompanied audial attentiveness with a visual one, he sought to wield a smile. It was a weak, convictionless thing. 

"It might work. I gotta confront my problems some time, and the tournament's a prime opportunity." Lubricating his lips with a swipe of his tongue -- there were traces of liquor there, burning them -- Hwoarang gave the blond's hands a half nod. "How long you been training for this?"  
  
"Ah, fuck." Steve rolled his eyes at the ceiling good-naturedly. "My mum always said I was a terrible liar." He clenched his wrapped hands into fists, one of which lashed out to catch Ranga playfully - and lightly - on the shoulder. 

"A while. 'ow about you? Did you just now decide you 'ad some problems to deal with?"  
  
"Nah. I've been dealing with the problem all my life. I was only able to act upon them four years ago, when I first entered one of these .. " Hwoarang explained. But then he seemed to ask himself, his gaze blurring thoughtfully, " .. why am I even telling you all this? Like it's psych 101. I'm sure you got your problems too. Fighters always do, right?" Hwoarang winked at Steve as he lifted his glass, soon tilting the contents to his mouth to swallow.  
  
"O' course. We all need a reason to fight...something that makes us angry." Hooking a finger in the handle of his mug, he held it out to Hwoarang. "Would you mind giving me a spot of that? Unless you're planning to binge, then don't let me interrupt." He flashed his grin again, curiously disarming.  
  
"We shouldn't be drinking this shit anyway. Not with prelims coming up -- " Hwoarang admonished as he reached for the bottle of vodka -- imported from Petersburg, claimed the label -- and handed it base first to the Brit. He could handle his liquor, but he wondered whether sharing was inadvertent sabotage to the other guy, and that made Hwoarang grin. Like he cared. [But he did sorta like the guy.] 

Whatever. 


End file.
